Saturday, 14 January 2017

Dark Souls III: Farron's Keep

Deciding to avoid the Crystal Sage for now, I find another path guarded by two bandits - a club wielder and a sword guy. I manage to kick one down a ladder shaft and follow up with a plunging strike. The second one opts to take the ladder down which makes it easy to hack at him while he is defenseless. Just when I think I'm doing well, I reach the next area - the continuation of the swamp, only this time it is green AND poisonous, meaning it is running time aplenty.

The giant leeches are the least of my worries as I scurry from dry land to dry land, avoiding the poison monkey men and giant swamp things wandering about. A sign near the start indicates that I'm supposed to turn off three flames to open "the door" too, and while the flames turn out to be little candles - of course they are all pretty well guarded. A ladder up leads to a really tall tower and the lair of Farron, the old wolf. He's eternally asleep though, and offers a PvP covenant to protect his swamp from invaders. As if this place wasn't bad enough!

Atop his lair are some gorgeous views, as well as extra items. There's also a huge demon like the one Ser Chubby helped with before, but I leave that one alone. Using that vantage point I can find the flames I missed and put them out too, opening the path to the next area which loops back to the non-poison swamp, and another bonfire within walking distance of the next boss, and Lord of Cinder, the Abyss Watchers.

Sounds like a boring job, watching an Abyss...

Interestingly the path to them is a battle site between the resident poison monkeys and a pair of dark wraiths, meaning easy souls for me and an easier time reaching the boss fog. This doesn't help me in the slightest once I'm inside though, as the dual wielding warriors (yes plural) make short work of me. For added difficulty my graphics card has a really hard time here and increases my "crash out of the game" ratio.